Assignment 4. Global Intellectual Capital - Cognitive Complexity

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For those blessed with the charisma that the rest of us envy, personality and interpersonal skills can carry the day for a while—but not for the long run. Charisma without substance and competence is meaningless, even dangerous. Both interpersonal and task skills matter, of course, but when it comes to leadership the former tend to get more press than the latter. the leadership field focuses so heavily on personality and interper- sonal skills that the need for genuine competence is easily overlooked. even the charisma-challenged can achieve greatness in leadership positions via sheer com- petence.

effective problem solving is a—perhaps the—foun- dation of competence for both leaders and followers. Competent leaders exhibit a clear results focus and apply the processes needed to fix problems, identify and seize opportunities, and otherwise meet and con-

quer important performance challenges. When leaders inspire followers to do the same (competently), they are developing a vital type of culture: a culture of distrib- uted leadership.

doing these things well may be the true heart of leader- ship, and none of it is easy. those who underestimate the challenge do so at their own peril. But here’s the good news: competent problem solving by leaders and followers requires applying knowledge and skills that many people already have at their disposal but simply forget to use.

Lead with Competence We might judge a leader’s competence initially on the basis of brief performances such as speech-giving, and then more broadly on interpersonal and other skills.

e x e C u t I v e f o r u m

LeadING WItH

CoMPeteNCe:

ProBLeM-SoLVING

BY LeaderS aNd

FoLLoWerS Thomas S. Bateman

s u m m e r 2 0 1 0 3 9

Ultimately, though, we appraise results in the form of performance improvements or declines. We can see these only after the fact; in real time, it’s not so easy to tell because hard data and results clearly attributable to the leader are unavailable. However, there is another useful way to appraise competence: the processes used (or not used) in solving problems and pursuing op- portunities (or failing to do so). Leader competence is evidenced by actually solving problems, exploiting op- portunities, and (just as important) enabling followers to do the same.

Leaders and followers exhibit competence when they execute the phases of classic problem-solving mod- els. For the best chance of successful outcomes, the essential activities of problem solving involve these steps: (1) clearly defining problem scope and goals; (2) generating multiple alternative courses of action; (3) thoroughly evaluating those alternatives; (4) making the choice; (5) implementing the decision; and (6) following up by changing the approach as needed. ad- ditional problem-solving techniques and activities exist, of course, but these six cover a lot of territory and are extraordinarily high-leverage. Ideally, these activities are done in sequence, although that is rare.

For small problems, it is not worth expending a lot of time and effort on every stage. But for nonroutine, consequential problems, these activities provide a path to competence. With expertise and experience, a leader can learn to execute these steps more quickly and in- tuitively. Still, for particularly difficult challenges, it helps to go through the stages conscientiously and thoroughly.

Outwit the Problem-Solving Traps

although the problem-solving activities seem com- monsensical, each activity is littered with traps. these pitfalls are so numerous, and they ensnare people so regularly, that they seem to be standard default op- tions. they are forms of self-sabotage, because people usually know better; they just don’t execute as fully and competently as they could and should. the common mistakes can be remedied by consciously and explicitly enacting their opposites or applying additional tech- niques.

In defining the problem, leaders often ignore impor- tant problems, tackle easier but less crucial ones, fail to specify goals, and allow their goals to be displaced by other, less substantial goals. effective leaders have the courage to tackle the things that matter most, articulate the goals that would indicate success, and do not allow slippage in their aspirations (for example, settling for a weak, ineffectual compromise) or get distracted by more trivial objectives.

In generating alternatives, you no doubt have seen lead- ers and decision-making teams satisfice by settling for the first option generated, or for a false choice between two obvious options. If you find yourself thinking “I have no choice” or “I have only two options,” consider it an indication that you have not thought hard enough about possible alternatives. For important problems, many options should be generated, perhaps using the proper brainstorming techniques that most people know but don’t actually execute. For example, a de- liberating body may decide to brainstorm but instead

Even the charisma-

challenged can achieve

greatness.

Effective leaders have the

courage to tackle the things

that matter most.

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often based on instinct rather than a thorough evalu- ative process. this is fine when the decider has lots of relevant experience on which the instinct is based, but not for major challenges in changing circumstances that have not been faced before.

regarding implementing and following up, suffice it to say here that these stages are too often neglected or treated as perfunctory. the result, of course, is in- adequate execution. table 1 provides additional de- tails, summarizing some common mistakes—some of commission, others of omission—and also potential remedies.

Adapt as Necessary

the final stage of problem solving deserves special at- tention: changing and adapting as new information and

wind up taking potshots at every option as it is verbal- ized, instead of holding fire until all options are on the table.

In evaluating alternatives, think of how many times you and others have spent the lion’s share of time argu- ing for an instinctively preferred option, based on the upsides as you see them while ignoring the downsides. think as well of how often people criticize others’ ideas based solely on their costs, and ignore the benefits. Furthermore, it is human nature to focus more on short-term than long-term consequences (which so often means that short-term costs override long-term benefits). devil’s advocacy and dialectical inquiry are useful techniques here.

at the deciding stage, simply think of how many leaders are either indecisive or too quick to decide, the latter

Activities traps (self-sabotage) effective leadership Define problem and goals Tackle the wrong problem Tackle the right problem

Ignore important problems Tackle important problems

Choose wrong objectives Choose right objectives

Lose sight of your goals Maintain focus on the important goals

generate alternatives Settle for the first alternative Make a full search for best alternatives

Use either/or thinking (only two choices) Identify multiple creative solutions

Settle for small-scale solutions Find solutions that match problem scope

evaluate alternatives Focus on short term Pay attention to both long and short term

Consider mostly impact on in-group Consider impact on multiple constituencies

Focus on benefits of preferred alternatives and costs of

other alternatives

Thoroughly consider costs and benefits of all

alternatives

Decision Satisfice Optimize

Choose based on instinct Use devil’s advocacy

Choose a single solution Create combined, integrative solution

implementation Treat as perfunctory Plan thoroughly; give mindful attention

Treat as routine Treat as a problem to be solved

Delegate poorly Delegate effectively

Discontinue leadership Continue leading

monitoring and follow-up Fail to assess Monitor and collect data

Assume success or failure prematurely Make an unbiased appraisal

Reduce commitment prematurely Maintain unflagging commitment to success

Fail to adjust Adapt as necessary

throughout the process: Think you can do all this well, working alone or with oth-

ers who think just like you do

Collect needed additional information; value and

seek diverse viewpoints

table 1.. P R O B L E M - S O L v I N G A C T I v I T I E S , T R A P S , A N D S O L U T I O N S

s u m m e r 2 0 1 0 4 1

tulane’s president, Scott Cowen, continues to see New orleans as one of the great development opportunities in america, potentially with a successful outcome as people see more clearly the progress being made.

Three Critical Imperatives Let’s step back from the problem-solving weeds and trees and consider the forest—specifically, three over- arching points that some would say are obvious but that leaders and followers ignore all the time.

Take action. • Inaction is a common default mode, when in fact action is necessary on consequential problems that won’t solve themselves.

Choose your challenges thoughtfully and strategically. • We often tackle things that are small and easy or personally interesting rather than focusing on a valid set of organizational priorities.

Distribute the leadership. • Leaders can’t do every- thing themselves.

Decide to Act

think of how many problems exist in your organiza- tion on which no one has taken action, or of the many opportunities on which no one has capitalized. or con- sider how many ideas you’ve had in the shower that remain maybe-some-rainy-day projects, still residing in the “good idea” rather than “resounding success” category. the point is, even when people know what should be done, they often do not take action. People are unlikely to act, even though they may care about an issue, until they make a real decision to do so. “I will do X” is a powerful call to action; “Maybe I’ll get to it when I’m not so busy” and “I wish someone would take care of that” are not.

Continuing with the Katrina example, everyone knew about the inadequate levees, but when Katrina struck, New orleans’s main hurricane project was decades behind schedule. Moreover, the city appeared to have nothing in the way of a real evacuation plan. FeMa director Michael Brown was more talk than action, and Mayor Nagin implored federal and state officials to get busy helping and taking action rather than doing

changing circumstances dictate. actually, this should be considered not a final stage but a never-ending one. Unfortunately, as important as this activity is known to be, we too rarely act accordingly.

to illustrate, consider some of the biggest performance challenges of the past decade: responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina. Politics and partisanship aside, these examples high- light the importance of adaptation specifically and more broadly the central role of problem solving in leadership. they also illustrate the importance of com- petent problem solving by followers as a crucial type of distributed leadership.

For example, the campaign in afghanistan in the im- mediate aftermath of 9/11 was well thought out and executed at first, but in the end the enterprise fell short. resources were diverted to Iraq too soon; the gains in afghanistan were not solidified, the situation worsened, and afghanistan became a huge problem once again. the “adjustment” in afghanistan was to withdraw resources too quickly. In Iraq, the occupation went poorly for too long in large part because of a refusal to adapt. But when the administration reconsidered and changed the approach, things started turning around.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, scientists and en- gineers in the aftermath collected data to learn more about the storm’s impact and about the human and institutional errors that compounded the catastrophe. Sometimes, learning after shortcomings in execution is about assigning responsibility and accountability and can turn into a mere blame game. But as Jed Horne states in Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City, with hurricanes it is vitally useful to know about the processes, scientific and institutional, that underlie failures. Whatever the causes, the knowledge gained can aid leaders and deci- sion makers in the future.

a well-known but underpursued form of adapting is to turn a problem into an opportunity. Some individuals and businesses saw new chances for new profits. Some New orleans neighborhoods engaged in aggressive post-Katrina revivals. tulane University drastically re- shaped the university’s curriculum and faculty, and

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as important as avoiding a nuclear exchange between great powers. Whatever your opinion, this example highlights the central relevance to leadership of choos- ing the right priorities for action.

Distribute the (Competent) Leadership

one important lesson from Hurricane Katrina is that not all successful leadership is top-down. effective dis- tributed leadership can contribute exponentially to results. Whereas elected officials and top-level FeMa appointments were the leaders most apparent to Ka- trina observers, many lesser-known organizations and individuals demonstrated great leadership and per- formed brilliantly. Private-sector companies, churches, communities, agencies, faith-based groups, and grass- roots collaboratives showed leadership by engaging in post-Katrina activism and action. Families offered their homes to the homeless; small towns and big cit- ies provided shelters and supplies; individuals and teams brought boats from everywhere to rescue the stranded.

returning to Iraq: military leadership and execution in the field in some ways compensated for errors by the civilian leadership. americans as well as Iraqis in Bagh- dad, civilians as well as the military, all were essential in solving problems and contributing to the progress made there.

distributing the leadership is not about hoping that others take the initiative and step up and fill vacuums. It also is not a typical act of delegation. It is a broader strategy of motivating followers to solve problems and seize opportunities. effective leaders communicate about the essential nature of those behaviors and create a culture that encourages people to exhibit them.

Demand Competent Followership Just as people want competence from their leaders (not to mention respect, trustworthiness, integrity, and so forth), leaders want certain things from their followers. Some are standard expectations: loyalty, a good atti- tude, good effort, conscientious work, goal accomplish-

media appearances. Mayor Nagin himself was not often seen in public, in contrast to President Bush’s famed “bullhorn moment” with the first responders in New York City.

Successful leadership usually means not sitting on the sidelines. taking action is more likely to be effective than a laissez faire approach to leadership. But even a strong action orientation doesn’t guarantee results. ef- fective problem solving is requisite.

Choose the Right Issues

Leaders ignore some issues and choose others for atten- tion and action. regarding Iraq, readers will have their own opinions, and knowledgeable people had different perspectives. Critics argued that the Bush administra- tion saw a problem where one didn’t exist (because Saddam Hussein was weaker than in the past, and was not the perpetrator of 9/11), and then working on the easy problem (capturing Baghdad) but ignoring the more difficult challenges surrounding the occupation. In contrast, key players saw Iraq as an opportunity to achieve several goals including withdrawing U.S. forces from Saudi arabia, creating a democracy in Iraq, creating a friendly source of oil, and improving Israel’s strategic position.

Some experts maintain that deciding to act in Iraq came at the neglect of other critical fronts including homeland defense, securing weapons and materials of mass destruction from theft and purchase, and win- ning the war of ideas. others worry that while the fight against terrorists is both urgent and important, it is not

Successful leadership

usually means not sitting

on the sidelines.

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Communicate About the Important Things From the Strother Martin prison gang boss in Cool Hand Luke (“What we have here is failure to communi- cate”) to Harvard leadership guru John Kotter talking about leading change (admonishing leaders to commu- nicate at least 10 and up to 100 times as much as they do), the importance of communication is constantly emphasized. and it is undeniable. Particularly because information is communicated constantly, everywhere, and in every direction, the important strategic question becomes, Communicate about what? Leading through competence requires communicating about perfor- mance results, problems, opportunities, and progress, and also about the processes required to solve problems and achieve results most effectively. Successful leaders do this as individuals, they do it in teams, and they distribute the leadership by asking followers to identify problems and take action in concert with others as needed. distributing the leadership also requires creat- ing the right culture by modeling the desired behaviors, developing appropriate skills in followers, rewarding performance in these regards, putting in needed con- trols, and managing mistakes appropriately.

Strengthening the problem-solving culture also requires top leaders to be receptive to honest communications from below (as opposed, for instance, to shooting messengers). Furthermore, leaders would do well to communicate the right combination of realism plus optimism. think of Franklin delano roosevelt com-

ment. there’s also a lot to be said for followers who go above and beyond the call of their required duties, doing things that benefit the organization or constitu- ents as long as they’re not running amok, out of con- trol. Leaders often need their people to spot problems and opportunities and solve or pursue them. When followers do this in concert with others, they are engag- ing in acts of leadership, and leadership is truly shared and distributed. Competence flowers throughout the entire organization.

top leaders cannot identify and solve all problems by themselves—and shouldn’t even try to do so. the best leaders lead their teams in problem- and opportunity- identification and discussions about how to tackle these performance challenges. they solicit ideas and contri- butions from others they know will offer useful—and sometimes contrary—perspectives. they are decisive as needed, but they also encourage input, involvement, and initiative from others. to be clear, this is not just about encouraging “initiative,” a vague concept that people define different ways. It means spreading the responsibility and competence so that others will solve problems effectively and capitalize on opportunities on their own and in collaboration with others.

Some of these suggestions require leaders to ac- knowledge (at least to themselves) that they don’t know everything, don’t have all the answers, and can’t do it all. this is anathema to some leaders, who would rather be certain than actually be right. on the surface, it also flies in the face of the need for leaders to be confident and to not appear uncertain. But such acknowledgment is pure realism in our complex, rapidly changing world. What therefore becomes important is to show confidence not so much in your own ability to handle everything as in the problem-solving process itself, in your own abil- ity to enact it, and in your followers’ ability to not only offer suggestions but take needed and proper actions themselves. By the way, leaders’ charisma grows stronger from showing appropriate confidence in themselves and in others. and guess what else: charisma doesn’t make a leader competent as much as problem-solving competence makes a leader more charismatic.

Some leaders would rather

be certain than right.

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leadership includes making any positive change, and ranges from fixing problems to creating and capital- izing on opportunities.

Like everything important, successful leadership is more easily claimed than done. But by attending to the basic activities of the problem-solving process and dis- tributing the problem-solving leadership it is certainly attainable. If leaders are willing to take the challenge, this process offers a clear, actionable, competence-based path to higher performance.

municating with both optimism and honesty about the realities of the present and about possible futures, including the obstacles that lay ahead, the viable strate- gic directions and opportunities, and the resources that could be brought to bear and prevail. For some lead- ers, the temptation is strong to conceal some things, but succumbing to the temptation will forfeit people’s trust, in part because when the truth isn’t told, people ultimately learn it anyway. Naive sugarcoating, cyni- cal spinning, denying problems, and other misleading communications about harsh realities undermine cred- ibility, support, and performance—and make people think their leader is incompetent.

Several books about Hurricane Katrina by authors including douglas Brinkley, Jed Horne, Ivor van Heerden, and Mike Bryan describe such leadership— not only problem-oriented, but realistic and optimistic. Governor Haley Barbour reassured his Mississippi con- stituents with his resilience, stoic optimism, and can-do spirit. When New orleans desperately needed straight talk from someone at the federal level, Lt. General rus- sell Honoré delivered it. When General Honoré saw that the atmosphere in the city was one of open warfare (weapons up), he told his troops to put weapons down, thus changing the communicated and perceived profile of the military presence to one of a humanitarian re- lief operation, to good effect. Beyond anyone’s doubt, General Honoré was brutally honest, results-oriented, and action-oriented.

Take the Challenge Leadership means taking action in concert with others, to move from a current state to a more desirable dif- ferent state. Not every leadership act needs to be inter- personal, but leadership ultimately creates constructive change with, through, and in other people. “Good”

Tom Bateman is Bank of America Professor at

the McIntire School of Commerce, University of

Virginia. He has taught and led management

workshops in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

His articles on leadership, work goals, motivation,

decision making, and proactive behavior have ap-

peared in academic and practitioner journals, and

his textbook (coauthored with Scott Snell), “Man-

agement: Leading & Collaborating in a Competi-

tive World,” is in its 9th edition.